Thursday, March 05, 2015

Cultural Appropriation

"To deny that there are remnants of Stonework of many kinds that illustrate an Indigenous presence on the Sacred Landscape of Turtle Island is a form of Ethnic Cleansing."

You don’t want me on your debate team. I can’t often come up
with a snappy retort instantly although hours, days, weeks, months or years
later I’ll come up with an (almost) eloquent reply, steeped in a wisdom that
acknowledges that I really don’t know much more than I actually do know.
I’ll
give you an example…

Let me take you back to November 2014 when I found myself
sitting at an Archeological Roundtable I’d been looking forward to for a long
time. The proper name for this was the “9th Annual Native American- Archaeology
Roundtable “Stone Cultural Features and Ceremonial Landscapes.” The description
for the event at The Institute for American Indian Studies website read like
this:

“This year’s roundtable explores stone cultural features and
ceremonial sites or landscapes. Our speakers share their experiences with this
expansive category of which until recently, have gone largely undocumented by
cultural resource professionals in the field. Our goal is to introduce new
information and elicit suggestions for how professionals can consider and
record these resources in their future investigations.”

How could I not attend? Less than 20 minutes from my house
via the back roads – wild (and possibly un-groomed and rabid) poodles couldn’t have
kept me away.

Imagine my surprise as one of the speakers began his
presentation by flashing up a power point slide that showed some websites that
he accused of committing “Cultural Appropriation” when it came to the Stones that
were supposed to be the focus of the Roundtable. The one that stood out in big
red letters was “Rock Piles.” I can’t clearly recall the others (Polly Midgley,
sitting quite near me, probably could tell you. She was being very good and
taking notes, unlike me who was acting more like “a Kid in a Rock Candy Store.”). I can’t tell you exactly what I was thinking as I saw that slide but be assured
that a great deal of profanity was involved.

Now, Cultural Appropriation is defined at Wikipedia as “the
adoption of elements of one culture by members of a different cultural group.
Specifically, the use by cultural outsiders of a minority, oppressed culture's
symbols or other cultural elements. It differs from acculturation or
assimilation in that cultural "appropriation" or
"misappropriation" refers to the adoption of these cultural elements,
taken from minority cultures by members of the dominant culture, and then using
these elements outside of their original cultural context. This cultural
property may be forms of dress or personal adornment, music or art, religion,
language, intellectual property or social behavior, all of which may have deep
cultural meaning to the original culture, but may be used as fashion by those
from outside that culture.

In practice, cultural appropriation involves the
appropriation of ideas, symbols, artifacts, image, sound, objects, forms or
styles from other cultures, from art history, from popular culture, or other
aspects of human-made visual or non-visual culture. Anthropologists have
studied the process of cultural appropriation, or cultural borrowing (which
includes art and urbanism), as part of cultural change and contact between
different cultures.”

Now he could have picked anyone of the many what I call “Sideshow
Pseudoscience Monetized Anyone but Indians” websites that sell books and videos,
have pseudo conferences of their own for big bucks –and offer, again for
outrageous prices, unofficial guided tours to Indigenous (Native American)
sites from Tierra del Fuego to whatever the northern most point of Turtle
Island is that some molehill of circumstantial evidence (or outright fraud) has
been built into a mountain of proof that lacks a single actual artifact with properly
documented provenance to back up that ancient Somebody from Somewhere Else
Theory.

I wanted to stand up and say, “Hey – go pick on Scott Wolter
and his stupid TV show that reaches millions and leave me and my friends alone!”
– but I didn’t.

I should’ve – but I didn’t.

I was going to when the floor opened for questions and
comments after his own “Indians didn’t leave a mark on the Landscape until
taught by European Farmers” Show but then Doug Harris spoke up before I had a
chance to. Anything I could have possibly said after he spoke would’ve been
like me playing some guitar for you after Jimi Hendrix was done playing his.

In hindsight, right here and right now, I’ll tell you who I
think committed the first acts of Cultural Appropriation: the first Europeans
who put up wooden rails over an Indigenous made row of stones and claimed - no, let me change that – appropriated a
piece of Indigenous Traditional Homeland.

And furthermore (I continue) that was also the first step in
what I consider to be the Ethnic Cleansing of Turtle Island, something still in
practice today, every time someone in a position of power says something like “That’s an agrarian
field clearing pile of stones made after European Contact Period” and gives the
go-ahead to destroy a possible Indigenous grave, such as one of the many my good
friend Peter Waksman is trying to get recognized and protected, no pay check
involved for his efforts to seek the truth.

I’ll say it again: to deny that there are remnants of
Stonework of many kinds that illustrate an Indigenous presence on the Sacred Landscape
of Turtle Island is a form of Ethnic Cleansing.

I did step up and make a comment, saying something to the
effect that the stonework (cultural elements) showing up on LiDar (after that presentation) is
probably more indicative of how Indigenous People shaped and maintained the landscape
for thousands of years rather than that of Post Contact Agrarian Farmers in the
last few hundred years, appropriating/misappropriating/using these cultural elements outside of their original context. Having thought it out for a couple months, I would have
included that to do otherwise is actually the most widespread example of
Cultural Appropriation - and a form of Ethnic Cleansing, something that Rock
Piles is definitely not in any stretch of imagination.

As Wikipedia says, "the adoption of these cultural elements, taken from minority cultures (or in this case "Indigenous Cultures that became the minority culture," I will interject) by members of the dominant culture, and then using these elements outside of their original cultural context."

A Link or two – and let the future research decide who
represents the truth of the matter:

“In a Dec. 12 written assessment (Dr. Timothy) Ives prepared
at the request of the land owners, he stated that he believed the cairns were
evidence of old land-clearing practices.

“This parcel contains numerous stone pile features,
consisting of stones that have been stacked or piled by hand,” Ives wrote.
“Constructed on varied surfaces, including the forest floor, ledge outcrops and
freestanding boulders, these features vary substantially in form and size, as
well as in the range of stone sizes they contain. While I cannot directly date
their construction, they appear to be clearance cairns associated with past
farming practices.”

But Doug Harris disagreed. Appearing at the Planning Board
meeting, he referred to the cairns as “ceremonial stones” that had been “left
by the ancients” on the property. He thanked Kingman and Devine for not having
disturbed them, and proceeded to explain their spiritual significance.

“I have a lot of respect for my colleague in historic
preservation, Timothy Ives, but he is not a specialist in tribal historic
preservation or tribal culture or tribal ceremony, Narragansett or any other
tribe,” Harris told the board.

The room fell silent as Harris described the spiritual
meaning of the cairns to the Narragansett people.

“Stone is a vehicle for receiving and transmitting prayer.
So every one of those stones, as we do in our tradition, was placed by someone,
some man, some woman, in prayer. A prayer was spoken into it and placed on the
earth and that was to be received by our Mother the Earth and we as her
children were to be balanced and harmonized by virtue of that relationship,” he
said.

“In a very different sense, it is our church. We have that
kind of an intimate relationship with the landscape … Now I can’t tell you what
you should do with regard to what’s on your property. I don’t have that right,”
he told the landowners. “I do have a responsibility to ask of you to look for a
moment through our eyes and open your spirit to what most people feel when they
are in the presence of those stones.”